heureusement, ici, c'est james

Here's a recent bout of analytical verbiage from Chantal Hebert on the National, which aired the night before these recent poll results came out, giving the Liberals a marginal lead and the progressive majority a landslide victory:

"the economy is starting to be on the radar again because of the high dollar; because of what's happening in the United States; because of rising energy prices - go through the list. But I also think that Conservative strategists don't see Stephane Dion as someone who is strong as economic issues. He has made poverty and the environment his two issues and I think they're trying to use tougher times on the economic front to try to portray Dion as someone who would be reckless with public money in difficult times; who would imperil the economy by going overboard on the environment and who would be a spending Liberal"

That might be a great old-fashioned political narrative, but the logic just doesn't hold up.

She thoughtfully omitted Dion's much advertised "third pillar" - the economy - and relied on that dead paradigm where the environment and economy are mortal enemies; the latter always poised to move in for the kill.

But when you turn your brain on, you quickly realize that the high dollar will continue to soar along with the price of energy as long as we pursue oil-intensive economic policies; that oil prices won't come crashing down with the big demand from Asia; that the conservative economic ideology - relying commodity exports - will have the eventual effect of driving up global inflation, and inflation here in Canada as a result; that the trouble in the U.S. economy from the sub-prime lending crisis will carry on for as long as Americans (and much of the rest of the world - us included) continue to finance a debt-based fiat economy through large loans and mass consumption rather than savings.

All this economic bullshit is part of the same ecological crisis.

At the risk of being unkind, I'm not sure what's more harmful to our well-being: dinosaur-pundits egging on our childish, chauvinistic government, or Harper's ancient neoconservative orthodoxy in action.

I never thought I'd see the day when our journalists would be unapologetically confusing Conservative games with actually governing, and then legitimately seeming to respect them for it.

I think it's because their jobs increasingly hinge on the made-up fluff of political soap operas rather than the real-life ramifications of policy positions, which frees them up to rake Dion's personality over the coals with adjectives like "pallid," "inept," "weak," and "incompetent." After all, it makes for a better political narrative.

Believe it or not, it wasn't his charm that won over the party in the first place. It was his priorities. But far be it from me to suggest that they actually figure this out before they spit uncontrollably at the people who are watching them on TV.

Pundits not only underestimate the depth and importance the environmental issue has for Canadians - especially of my generation - but, according to the polls, their comments expire only a few hours after they spit them out.

Harper, it seems, can any weather number of short-sighted flip-flops on the economy, income trusts, the environment, or even the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, by virtue of an emasculated and intellectually decrepit media which continues to laud his "considerable abilities." What a joke.

Believing that conservative orthodoxy will cure any of these persistent problems would be like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Labels: dead paradigms, environment, Stephane Dion, Stephen Harper